


Moments in between

by Bees_forever



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Allison Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Diego Hargreeves Needs A Hug, F/F, Luther Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Mentions of Allison Hargreeves/Luther Hargreeves, Past Sexual Abuse, Period-Typical Racism, Racism, Sexual Abuse, The 60s were hard on all of them... :(, The Umbrella Academy (TV) Season 2 Spoilers, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, but it's blink and you miss it tbh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25727065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bees_forever/pseuds/Bees_forever
Summary: Just things I'd like to have seen more of or get more explored in season 2.Mostly just things which I thought were implied and that made me sad.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 65





	1. Good Dog

Luther woke up in a panic, without orientation and a face full of pain. What had happened? Was there something wrong with his lunar home? The oxygen maybe? He needed to check as quickly as possible or he might...  
  
  
“Easy there, boy,” a voice said and he calmed down immediately. Oh, right. He wasn’t on the moon anymore or… he wouldn’t be for decades. The first moon landing hadn’t happened yet. Technically he hadn’t even been born yet.  
The year was 1962 and he was with Jack Ruby. He had fought for him.  
  
“Jack… did I…?”   
“You did a perfect job, boy,” Jack said and there was pride in his voice and a softness and an earnestness… Luther just _knew_ he meant it.   
  
He still asked: “Yeah?”   
“Yeah. We got lots of money together. But you did let yourself get a few too many on the skull in that first round thought it would be better to stay with you. Don’t want my best man to die in his sleep because of some head injury, do I?” Ruby said and laughed fatherly.   
  
Luther tried to sit up but Ruby put a hand on his shoulder. “Not so quick, not so quick, boy. You stay in bed for the day, make yourself comfortable…” Ruby stood up and turned Luther’s bedside lamp on. The man smiled at him. “Look at that face though… Geeze, I need to let you finish sooner next time or it’ll get just as messed up as your body,” he told him.   
Luther flinched at that remark about his body but Ruby patted his shoulder. “Don’t you worry boy. Jack won’t let that happen to you,” he said and got his handkerchief out starting to dab at Luther’s temple it came back bloody. “Can’t have you looking ugly and not have any luck with the ladies, eh? Wouldn’t do that to my best man.”   
  
Luther made a face. He already looked pretty ugly didn’t he? That body…   
“Hey, hey, boy, don’t you look at me like that, not when you did such a good job,” Ruby said and smiled. “Here, I got you a present,” Ruby said and pulled out a small box.   
Luther looked at it and his face lit up. “That’s… thanks, Jack.” It was a small model plane, fitting to the one he got from his first self-earned money.   
“That’ll help you get back on your feet, hm?” Luther nodded his head. “Can’t say I’m not good to you, my boy.”   
  
Ruby leaned forward and pressed a kiss onto Luther’s forehead. “I can’t believe how much money you made me. Rest up boy, you got off for today, later I’ll send Autumn to check on you, how’s that?” Ruby winked when he mentioned Autumn not knowing that she’d really just check on Luther, maybe chat a little.   
Luther liked Autumn. Wanted to make sure she was okay. There were a lot of drunken assholes in the bar who couldn’t keep their hands to themselves.  
  
“Thanks, Jack,” Luther said and smiled.   
“You deserve it,” Ruby told him.   
  
  


And then he was gone and Luther was left with a headache and a swollen face but also with the feeling that at least someone wanted him like he was now. 


	2. Going under

Diego hates this place.   
He hates it. He has to get out somehow.   
No, right now. He has to get out, right now. 

The medicine reminds him too much of some of Dad’s training. Being locked away in a tank that slowly filled with water. Being told to hold it away from him with his powers never quite getting to a point where he could do that for longer than a few minutes and then the feeling of drowning… going under…   
  


“Calm down, Diego!”   
  
  
_"Be calm now!"_

No! He doesn't want to calm down!   
  


“Diego. Calm down.” 

_“Calm down, number two. You have to be completely calm for this task to work or you will certainly drown.”_

Diego doesn’t want to… doesn’t want to calm down. 

“Get the needle ready, he's not getting there.” 

**_NO!_**

“Please… no more…” 

_“You will never master your powers completely like this, Number Two.”_

“If you’d just taken your meds like a good boy we wouldn’t be here.”   
  


  
“No, please,” Diego sobs but he isn’t sure if it’s in his memory or in reality too.   
  


“Here we go.” 

The giant needle buries itself into Diego’s skin with cold pain. 

Diego goes under.   
The water closes over him. 

  
_Dad’s gonna be so disappointed in me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: "Alright so Diego probably doesn't have his holding his breath infinite powers… how can I still make him have horrible water training experience?"  
> TUA s2: "Diego has some low level telekinesis"  
> Me: "I'll work with that." 
> 
> I'm awful sorry, Diego. You deserve better.  
> Also the tenses are gonna keep changing with the chapters.


	3. Autumn Memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: This chapter is about sexual abuse including what happened to Luther in s1 with the rave girl; please be careful when reading this and skip if necessary.

“Stop it! I’m off duty!”    
That’s what Autumn says.   
The hands of the guy travel up her thigh. He isn't stopping.    
Luther doesn’t need to see more. 

He shoves him. Just hard enough for him to fall on the ground and maybe get some bruises. He slurs something but Luther doesn’t care.   
“Are you okay?” he asks Autumn and it comes out pressed, he has a problem getting the words out completely, for a second he thinks about Diego where ever he is, he pushes that thought away. Diego is gone.    
“Yes,” Autumn whispers and then: " _ Are you?"  _

Luther doesn’t answer, he looks at the ground.    
  
No, he definitely isn’t okay.    
  
  
He should have punched that guy’s head in. But. What about Autumn?  
  
  
He won’t tell Jack about this. Jack talks weird about the girls with snide in his voice even when he’s complimenting them. Luther doesn’t understand Jack then. Luther doesn’t _like_ Jack then.  
  
  
Right after though Autumn takes his hand. It had been shaking and Luther didn’t notice.    
Right after she takes him home to her apartment and she puts him on the couch and they watch TV and Luther just watches the flimmering footage not listening to the voices.    
Right after Autumn makes him food. No eggs like Jack would to keep up his strength, no cookies like Mom would make him way back before this mess started. Just some fish sticks with mashed potatoes.    
  
“I’m not a very good cook,” Autumn tells him. “I fail in that regard as a proper lady too.”    
Luther doesn’t ask. He doesn’t need to. He's seen how the women in the bar are treated. “You are a proper lady to me,” he tells her. She smiles. 

  
She insists he sleep in her bed. He tells her it’s hers.    
“We can share?” Autumn asks.    
“After… after that?” Luther says. “You really want that?”    
Autumn smiles. “You’re not like these boys, are you?”  
  
  
Luther dreams of the rave girl that night.    
How she talked about furries at him without stopping like the TV just a flimmering picture in front of him that kept talking. How the world felt fuzzier every second. How he didn’t even know where he was. Her hand on his chest. The customer’s hand on Autumn’s thigh. The man. The woman. The hands. Traveling. Traveling. Traveling. Up. Down.  
No stopping. Even if you ask them to.   
  
  
He wakes up startled with tears in his eyes.  
Autumn’s sitting up in bed face pale in the moonlight there’s tears running down her face too.  
  
  
Luther swallows and sits up putting a hand on her shoulder.    
They melt into a hug.    
“I’m sorry,” he tells her. “You didn’t deserve that.”    
“You neither.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted the next chapter to be something lighter about Allison and her beauty parlor friends who were awesome and maybe I wanted it to be a little bit about the parts of Ray's and her relationship I found rushed but then I had to write this because things have been bad and I have been working through stuff and projecting onto poor Luther helps sometimes.


	4. Their eyes were watching Her

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allison reads a book she always loved and has doubts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter does focus a little on the racism Allison experiences. On the last chapter I answered a comment saying that I would probably not focus too much on period-typical racism as it's not a personal eperience and I stand by that but I also don't think you can separate Allison's life in the 60s from it and I don't want to do that either.  
> This is also my interpretation of how I think Allison herself views her experience based on the show and the way Emmy Raver-Lampman described it.  
> I am a white european person and I do try to be as respectful as possible but if I missed the mark, please let me know. 
> 
> Also there's a little hint of Allison's and Luther's relationship in this.

“What are you reading, girl?”    
Allison looks at Odessa and holds up the book.    
“Ah,  _ Their eyes were watching God _ , the writer died a while back didn’t she?” Odessa says in a conversational tone.    
Allison nods and sighs. “January 1960,” she tells her in her now hoarse voice.    
She wasn’t there then but she’d read as much as she could about Hurston when she was younger.    
“That long already? Jesus. It goes by so fast, doesn’t it?” Odessa sighs. 

Allison nods quietly and looks back at her book.    
She’s at the beginning of the third chapter. In the book Janie is asking herself if  _ marriage would end the cosmic loneliness of the unmated _ and Allison is asking herself the same thing.    
But that isn’t a good comparison to make. She isn’t in a similar situation as sixteen year old Janie had been with Logan Killicks. She loves Ray. There’s no Nanny making her go through with the marriage as there had been for the heroine of the book in her lap. Allison breathes out.    
An all too familiar voice tells her:  _ Stop being ridiculous, number three. _

“I read it for the first time when I was a little girl,” she says suddenly. “I’d gotten injured while… while doing my chores and my… my brother gave it to me while I was on bedrest. It’s been my favourite since.”    
That isn’t even a lie. If you look at them right, missions had been sort of like chores for them, hadn’t they?    
Odessa laughs loudly. Allison looks at her confused.    
“Girl I think that’s the most you’ve ever told me about your past in all the time we’ve known each other! I almost believed you’ve just fallen out of the sky suddenly and into the hands of those awful white boys. What got you talking all of a sudden? Is the wedding making you nostalgic?”    
  


Allison bites her lip and looks down at her book again, thumb softly stroking over Zora Neale Hurston’s name. She had wanted to name Claire Zora for a while but then Patrick had talked about something he’d read about how children who were listed late in the alphabet had always a disadvantage. 

  
This book really is one of her favourites. She’d read it again and again after Ben gave it to her in the infirmary with a simple “You’ll like it.”    
She had read it after he’d died, had kept the copy he’d given her with her when she moved out and used it as a sort of talisman in Hollywood before she had her big breakthrough. She had read it a million times and she’d always thought that she’d give it to Claire one day when she was old enough to understand. 

  
Allison herself hadn’t fully understood when she first read it, she’d been sheltered from the racism of the real world in their home where success and power weren’t determined by your skin but by what their father put worth on.    
It had started to seep in a little by the time Ben had handed her the book though, weird questions reporters never asked their white brothers, awful insults criminals threw at her and even sometimes snide comments fans made… but she worked through that. She stayed relevant, stayed a star. Kept herself sheltered. And  _ unprepared  _ for this. The racism of the 1960s hits her, it gets to her. Something she has so little control over seems to determine her worthiness in so many people’s eyes.    
Worthiness to sit in a restaurant, worthiness to shop with worthiness to stand up for herself.   
Maybe that was part of the reason why she loved Ray so much, he wasn’t going to take it. He was willing to fight for a better world for generations to come. Generations she would belong to, her daughter would belong to. 

Or maybe it was just because she needed someone to adore her because that’s how she used to stay alive. How she protected herself. And Ray adored her, really _adored and loved_ her, in a way she only ever had once and even then it was rotten and broken in the end and if she thinks too hard about it old wounds tear open again.   
  
“It’s just…” Allison’s voice cracks like it does sometimes now when she strains it too much. She breathes and fights through the pain of her still damaged vocal cords. “I’m not going too fast am I? I’m not…” she stops because her voice won’t let her say anymore but Odessa understands either way and comes to the armchair Allison was in, putting her arms around her.   
  
“Oh, honey, I don’t know, I don’t know, you’ve only known Raymond for a few months at best. But I can tell you one thing he’s not like Janie’s men. He’s a good man. And he’ll do his best to be a good husband to you. But I truly don’t know. I don't know your story well enough to know if it’s too soon for you. You gotta know that. And if you’re not sure…” She sighs. “How about I make you tea for your throat and you take some time to think about it?”   
Allison nods slowly and looks down at the book again. She misses Ben suddenly overwhelmingly. Misses all of her siblings.   
  
She hugs the book to her chest and when Odessa returns with the tea she finds her crying silently. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!   
> My tumblr is @jojowing; sometimes I post stuff about fics I want to write.


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